Maternal Mental Health Alliance. Maternal mental health during a pandemic: A rapid evidence review of COVID-19’s impact (March 2021)

Summary

From early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA) and Centre for Mental Health were concerned about the increased mental health challenges that women during and after pregnancy were likely facing as a result of the pandemic and government-imposed restrictions introduced to tackle it.

Thanks to Comic Relief ‘Covid Recovery’ funding, the MMHA commissioned the Centre to explore just how much of a challenge the pandemic has placed on perinatal mental health and the services that support women, their partners, and families during this time.

This report draws together all of the available data collected during the pandemic for the first time.

Content

Key findings

The evidence shows a significant decline in maternal mental health during the pandemic:

1. The pandemic has posed mental health challenges for women during pregnancy and early motherhood.
2. The impact has been unequal.
3. Perinatal mental health services had worrying gaps even before the crisis.
4. Informal support has been detrimentally impacted.
5. Changes to labour and birth because of the pandemic have increased stress and anxiety.
6. Concern for infants and babies has increased stress and anxiety.There have been missed opportunities for understanding / fully responding to what being classed as vulnerable really means in the perinatal period.
7. Whilst still awaiting data, significant concerns exist for women with pre-existing mental health conditions.
8. Despite the increased need, services supporting women and families were impacted detrimentally.
9. The workforce supporting women and families in the perinatal period is facing its own wellbeing challenges and needs support.
10. Increased demand for voluntary and community services, who themselves have been impacted.
11. Virtual contact massively increased with mixed potential consequences and a need for evaluation.

Recommendations for action

The report makes the following eight urgent recommendations for action:

• Recommendation 1: Assessing the true level of demand.
• Recommendation 2: We want to future-proof perinatal mental health services against future pandemics or similar public health crises.
• Recommendation 3: We need up-to-date data to understand the changing picture.
• Recommendation 4: We need to tackle racial discrimination within health systems and adverse outcomes for people of colour.
• Recommendation 5: We need better research.
• Recommendation 6: We need to understand the impact of ‘remote’ mental health care.
• Recommendation 7: Government and NHS must recognise the importance of voluntary and community organisations.
• Recommendation 8: We must support the mental health of all health and care staff.